Luca Bracali

BIOGRAPHY

He has travelled to 138 countries, is author of 10 books and winner of 8 prizes in International photo contests. Since 2008 he is a member of Apecs (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) for his contributions about environment published in the media. In 2009 he was the only reporter to reach the geographic North Pole on skis. In 2010 Bracali debuted in the world of fine-art photography and his pictures have been on show, as solo exhibitions, in museums and galleries in Rome, Sofia, Kiev, Odessa, Copenaghen, Montreal and New York. Tv director of Rai 1 since 2011, Bracali published 4 reportages on Nation­al Geographic. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge has entitled in his name the 198.616th asteroid discovered.

FUJIFILM X-T2 – Impression

Dear Fuji friends, I got the chance to test since last April the new X-T2 on the occasion of some of my recent photo reports and video documentaries. In Ireland in May, in Scotland in June and in Alaska in August. In 30 years of my job with 138 countries visited, I have specialized in travel photography and nature in all its nuances and meanings, and landscapes, faces and animals.

From 2013 I'm Fujifilm ambassador, among the first in Italy, using some top models including the X-Pro1, the X-E2, the X-T1 and X-Pro2. And never like this time, using the X-T2 fact, I had the distinct feeling of having an object in my hands capable of scoring a staple in this furious chase technology.

But what are the strengths of this super-mirrorless?

In practical terms, for example photographing the hexagonal rocks of the Giant's Causewy or those overlooking the Cliff of Moher, the prehistoric settlements of the Aran islands such as the Orkney, the readability of the plot, the rock texture, as the delicate shadow / highlight tones of the stones, they have always been clean and precise, giving the image the same color as the shooting scene. Above all, not being a post-production lover at all, I leave the camera settings as default for color, contrast, saturation and dynamic range because I feel they are more than satisfactory to me.

At high ISO response is good, the noise is very poor even in shaded areas and, wherever it appears, remains therefore very uniform, so in night photography, without any tripod, it become a tangible benefit.

We come now to autofocus, always one of the weakest point of mirrorless camera, but with the X-T2 is done you can easily change your mind. The 91 focus points expandable to 325, unlikely giving up the target, both in tracking or panning shooting and in the heart of Katmai, as in Denali reserve, they have perfectly done their duty.

I want to conclude my impressions spending a few words on the video of this new flagship, the first X Series to support 4K video recordings, with a 100 Mbps bitrate. The video image quality it is quite remarkable in my opinion, both in the contrast that in a very detailed texture, with 9 available film effects. And to give you an idea of the quality, I aired two of my stories entirely shot with the X-T2 in Ireland and Scotland on Easy Driver, the weekly column of Rai 1 (main italian tv network) where I'm working as director. And I can assure you, but you can easily realize by yourself watching the episodes on Rai Replay, that comparing a 30.000 euro XD-Cam that we usually use to film this stories and the X-T2 camera there is no quality difference, infact three of my colleagues, have enjoyed much more the quality of this small mirrorless which also has the HDMI output so you can record 4K movie onto external HD without any compression ratio.